Hope That Fades

Sometimes, somewhere along the way, you unknowingly develop nonsensical habits. You pop a mint every time you enter your vehicle, you tie and re-tie your shoes before walking out the door, you floss after every meal and snack and bowl of pudding.

For me, among myriad other bizarre ways to operate in this life, I write words on myself. I take a pen — blue, black, red, purple, ball-point, Sharpie, what have you — and I physically inscribe words onto my person.

As a writer, naturally, I have a thing for words. Does it not fascinate you that we humans have developed thousands of languages across thousands of years, each featuring limitless strings of characters? Characters that turn into words that turn into sentences and thoughts and emotions, stirring us into both action and passivity, courage and fear, reckless abandon and abandoned wrecks.

Out of English’s 1,019,729.6+ words, I consciously and subconsciously choose to write one particular word on my left wrist day after day after often wearying day.

The word is hope.

I cannot tell you what ever inspired me to do such a thing, write such a word, repetitively and repetitively onto my pale pink flesh. Why I started this inane habit or even when.

One year ago? Five? It happened some time while I was living in California — I mean, I think.

Nonetheless, I often go about my days and occasionally stare down and see HOPE. If it’s morning, the ink is still bold and brave and true; if Disneyland’s 9:30pm fireworks are sounding just beyond my apartment, the word is barely discernible. Faded. Questionable.

The only way HOPE remains is if I choose to reapply ink to my wrist the following morning. Or get an actual big-boy tattoo someday. (To be determined.)

A friend recently messaged me about some personal struggles, and naturally, my empathetic self related with every shared word. It doesn’t matter that this friend and I actually share many of the same struggles.

I just get it. I get the “smut and grossness” of this life and its constant offering of false hope. I hate it, and I wish it would all erupt in a volcano we cannot reach.

I recently messaged my friend the following. Perhaps my string of characters and words and thoughts can encourage you with fresh ink somehow. I pray it does:

All I can offer are my prayers and support through your struggles. I wish I had a nice rosy formula that would make the “smut and grossness” simply disappear, but alas. I do not.

 

The word “hope” is something that I cling to often. I write it on my wrist on a nearly daily basis, watching the word fade throughout the day as I re-ink myself the next day, and the next, and the next. It’s a fitting metaphor for the reality that this fallen world constantly beckons us to deny our true Hope for the false hopes that it offers. And yet you know as well as I that false hope is not true hope at all.

 

My advice: cling to Hope today. Hope that all will be restored to the way it once was, and that meanwhile, God purposes the darkness of this world into light. That’s what I’m doing. Or trying to do, at least. As much as hope fades throughout any given day, His mercies are new each and every morning.

My friends:

May we all cling to Hope today. If hope is hard for you to amass right now…why not write it on your wrist? Stare at it a while? Let the ink linger and sink into your soul more than your actual wrist itself…?

Struggle well,

Tom